


Checkmate

by sardonicsmiley



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-22
Updated: 2005-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 07:29:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21132956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonicsmiley/pseuds/sardonicsmiley
Summary: This is my favorite SGA couple. Weir/Caldwell shipperness. Futurefic.





	Checkmate

**Author's Note:**

> This is my favorite SGA couple. Weir/Caldwell shipperness. Futurefic.

Their relationship reminds her of chess.

Or, rather, it reminds her of the way he plays chess, careful and so terribly intense that it can sweep her up and grip her in any and every circumstance. When he plays chess, he focuses on it so completely, so fully, that his whole being is absorbed. She finds that when he is with her, even just in the same room, or over the com, he is that intent on her.

The first time they kiss is such a shock that she stands there after he pulls away, watching the inside of her eyelids, trying to discern exactly what it is she is feeling. And when she opens her eyes, dancing in a haze of heat and shivers, he is staring into her face, like she is the only thing in the galaxy. When she breaks into a smile, absorbing that level of attention and becoming giddy in its wake, he mirrors it back at her. It is the first, but not the last, time in her life that she has felt that she is not only the most important thing in the galaxy, but, in fact, the only thing.

The first time they fall into bed together, after he had been gone four months, so long that the warmth and wholeness of that first kiss and all subsequent ones had almost abandoned her, she knows with bone-deep-thought that no one else is as important as her to him. She swims in the bliss of being the Only Thing, and sleeps better than she ever has. When she wakes, he is there, tangled against her, his heat radiating through her, forming a protective little barrier that she revels in. It is the first time in her life that she has ever felt safe, and something in her chest bursts and fills her with a feeling of...of...happy, that she just can't put into words.

After that, she suspects she knows what the warm, happiness filling her to the point of overflow is.

The first time she knows for sure is the first time she is sure that she's lost him.

It is during that terrible week, as Atlantis watches a wraith hive ship streak towards them, on, apparently, recon, that she knows. As she watches the off-world evacuation, of personnel and what technology they can take with them, the twists and knots in her belly are not just from the thought of losing Atlantis. Especially not when the _Daedalus_ had slipped into position between the wraith and her. The first week had been terrible, the anticipation, the fear, the evacuation...the second week is hell. They lose contact with the _Daedalus_ as she takes a boarding party.

There is comm silence, for a week. A storm on the waters had knocked out their long-range scanners, and so those left over on Atlantis, those that could not leave, waited blindly for what might come. It is the longest week of her life.

One morning there are screams, and a terrible noise so loud that it physically knocks her backward, but the red streak in the sky, and the long, sleek, metal form in front of it make up for everything. The _Daedalus_ breaks atmosphere, and she feels the cold that has haunted her steps for nearly two weeks drain away. She is there, to see the first water landing of the mammoth ship, she is there when a huge door pops open on the side of the ship, and the first person sticks their upper bodies out, waving in distress to the people on Atlantis.

The first time she knows she loves him is as she waits, her heart pounding so hard it shakes her whole body, as they ferry people from the severely injured _Daedalus_ to Atlantis. The dead come first, and she wonders how they will accommodate them all, and says a little prayer of thanks every time she sees that the corpse is not him. Then the wounded. Each survivor brings fresh horror stories, and new wounds. The badly wounded are sent to Beckett, carried on a line of stretchers that seems impossibly long. And then, finally, there is him.

He is wounded, a gash runs from his temple to his jaw, and his left arm is supported in a sling, but he walks towards her as calmly and stoically as he has ever been. She clings to him, propriety be damned, and he whispers her name down into her hair, over and over and over, until she stops shaking. The first time she knows he loves her, which she should have known from the beginning, is the first time he says it, so softly she barely hears him, as she holds him.


End file.
